University of Missouri in Columbia Gets New Control Rooms

Video Control Room for Mizzou Athletics at the University of Missouri in Columbia

AUSTIN, Texas — Mizzou Athletics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo., just kicked off enhanced sports coverage with two brand-new video control rooms integrated by systems integrator BeckTV. The control rooms support scoreboard video production and live campuswide production of collegiate sports events for broadcast on the university’s athletic conference cable channel and for streaming via the conference's online platform.

“The initial plan for this project was to create a single control room that would support digital production for our conference streaming service, but BeckTV helped us to achieve much more than that,” said Stan Silvey, assistant athletic director for broadcast operations, Mizzou Athletics.

Remodeling existing space within the Mizzou Arena — home to men’s and women’s basketball — to house a primary control room, a secondary control room, an audio control room, and an equipment room, BeckTV provided Mizzou Athletics with facilities capable of providing production for venues across the campus. The company took advantage of newly laid fiber-optic cabling to connect the control rooms to the facilities hosting volleyball, gymnastics, wrestling, baseball, softball, football, track and field, and soccer. With the resulting installation, Mizzou Athletics is able to produce high-quality sports programming and coverage in-house, maintaining creative control while eliminating the need for outside production personnel and associated costs.

Because BeckTV helped Mizzou Athletics stay within its budget to build two control rooms rather than the one room originally specified, the broadcast operations department can simultaneously produce multiple live shows or produce a live show while also managing scoreboard video for a home basketball or football game. Only new equipment was used for this project, and the complement of gear includes an Evertz router, multiview processing, and support gear; Panasonic cameras; Ross production switchers and Xpression graphics; Abekas Mira replay units; Click Effects CrossFire; a Yamaha mixer; and AJA support gear.

UP AND RUNNING QUICKLY

The infrastructure integrated by BeckTV allowed the production team — a mix of students and professionals — to get up and running quickly in producing sports programming for digital distribution and cable broadcast. In fact, just months after the installation was completed, Mizzou Athletics used its primary control room to produce a volleyball match for broadcast on its conference cable channel.

Today, Mizzou Athletics is equipped to produce high-quality sports coverage showcasing many more of its athletes and teams. In so doing, the department helps to raise the profile of the conference and the university itself. Mizzou sports fans across the world now can access Missouri Tigers games online. The new facilities are tied by fiber to network offices in Bristol, Conn., and Charlotte, N.C., so live footage from Mizzou Athletics productions is available for air — typically via “live look-ins” — at any time.

“The installation at the Mizzou Arena represents the second facility we have completed that meets conference requirements for content production, and the team at Mizzou Athletics is making the most of it — demonstrating excellent production value worthy of a leading conference network,” said Peter Dernbach, project engineer at BeckTV. “We work hard to help our clients realize their vision, and this project has been a great success for us and Mizzou Athletics.”